The images capture a woman in a hauntingly familiar pose. On one of Manchester’s grandest streets, outside a department store, she is bent as if she’s trying to pick something up.
Almost touching her toes, she remains motionless for minutes. Before long, she collapses to the ground, and bystanders are calling police for help.
The disturbing scene is eerily reminiscent of another time. The time when the Manchester Evening News first reported on a scourge that was leaving vulnerable people frozen in ‘zombie-like’ states across the city centre.
The sight of people wasted on synthetic cannabinoids would become so familiar, seven years ago, that national headlines would go on to dub the city ‘Spicechester’, home of the ‘living dead’.
That’s fucked. I knew when these designer drugs became super cheap and available that this was going to happen. I’m pretty sure it’s the same reasons some people stick to alcohol mostly, it’s widely available and cheap and it basically turns off reality for a period of time. It’s no wonder when other drugs are taken off the streets that people turn to shit like this. Prohibition does NOT work.